For medium to large businesses that receive many phone calls per day, it is common for a telephone company to provide such businesses with more than a single incoming telephone line on which to receive calls. The plurality of incoming lines are commonly configured to as a hunt group. The hunt group has a telephone number associated with it, which when dialed will cause a telephone routing system to attempt to connect the call to each of the incoming telephone lines until an idle line is found.
In addition to having more than a single incoming telephone line, many businesses subscribe to voice messaging or queuing services provided by their telephone company. For businesses that subscribe to a voice messaging service, if all the telephone lines in the hunt group are either busy or go unanswered, the voice messaging service will produce a computer-activated message instructing the caller to leave a message. The message is recorded by the voice messaging system and is stored in a computer, thereby allowing subscribers to listen to the recorded messages and call back customers who were unable to get through.
Alternatively, it is also common for businesses to subscribe to a queuing service. With a queuing service, if all the telephone lines in the hunt group are busy, a computer-activated message is produced telling the outside caller that all operators are currently busy, and that the call will be answered in the order received. While these two types of call handling features work very well for handling the majority of incoming calls, neither feature allows a caller to choose whether he or she wants to leave a message or to remain on the line until the call is answered. In the past, it was not thought to have been possible to combine these two features with currently existing telephone switching and voice messaging hardware without having to develop extensive new computer software that controls the telephone switches and voice messaging hardware in order to allow a caller to have the option of being placed in a queue or leaving a message.
There is therefore a need for a system that allows a telephone company to set up hunt groups for customers using existing hardware and software currently found in telephone switches so that the hunt groups have both voice messaging and queuing capability.